Daily medication is often organized in dosing packages for ready use by the user and for dispensing in an organized and controlled manner. For example, certain medical conditions or ailments call for certain medication(s) or treatment regimen(s), which may include a variety of pills or medications that are to be taken in certain combination and/or at certain times (e.g., daily, twice per day, every other day, etc.). Often however it is difficult for a person or patient to keep track of and/or remember what pills or medications to take and at what time to take them.
Attempts have been made to help individuals organize and/or use certain items at certain times of day. For example, compartmentalized pillboxes have been developed that contain multiple doses to be taken at different times. However, such devices still require a person or individual to fill them, and to remember to take them at certain times.
As well, medications may be obtained from multiple sources such as mail-order pharmacy or pickup from a local drug store. These medications are then transferred, oftentimes with the aid of a family member or care-giver into pillboxes or medicine trays on a routine basis. Some independent or community pharmacists fill a customer's medicine tray weekly to avoid the confusion and avoid the mistakes a person might experience when loading multiple medications into a tray. Medicine trays filled by a community or independent pharmacy often are required to have a label with tray contents. The community or independent pharmacy often provides services like loading a medicine tray for customers, whereas the chain drug stores typically do not. Most medicine trays are divided into four unique rows of compartments identified as morning, noon, evening, and night with multiple rows associated with the days of the week: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. The designs of the medicine trays are not standard and thus the size and number of compartments can vary from different suppliers.
Most medicine trays are simply plastic trays with a cover and require a user to pierce the label of a given compartment and either pick the medicine out of the compartment by squeezing the medication with their fingers, or pour the contents into his/her hand. The piercing of this label may be difficult for certain people who are experiencing reduced hand strength caused by arthritis or aging. Oftentimes, opening the trays and individual compartments require knives or scissors to pierce and access the contents of a tray's compartment of medication. The overall size of some of the medicine trays may also be cumbersome when pouring medications into a user's hand, some are not portable given their size, and some of the compartments are made of small plastic compartment-specific lids that are difficult to open.
For example, U.S. Pat. No. 3,820,655 is a container for holding and dispensing individual articles with separable pull tabs associated with four unique columns of contents all maintained in operable pre-pulled closed condition relative to the tray by an associated cover having dispensing apertures aligned to the tray compartments normally closed by the pull tabs. The four pull tabs allow the user to pull the tabs in any order which makes the design only suitable for a single-dose packaged medication, not multiple medications. As an example, if the user pulls the first tab in the first column, the contents are dispensed from a location on the first column. The user then could pull the third tab and dispense from the third column multiple times before selecting the any four of the next tab when it is time to take the dosage. If the columns were labeled morning, noon, evening, night, and the rows were labeled Monday through Sunday, errors in medication could quickly occur given there is no way to control the order of the tabs being pulled. And if there were multiple medications, and unique combinations in the containers on the medicine tray, the four-unique pull tabs without controlled or organized pulling would quickly lead to medication errors. The pull tabs are not flexible given they are made from a single sheet of material described in the embodiment. The dispenser is made from a single sheet of material preferably made of a paper product and is die cut to provide four unique panel areas with one of the four with vacuumed formed cavities to receive the medications. The four main panels with score lines strategically placed allow the design to be folded and heat-sealed to complete the design. There are recessed areas for the four pull tabs to allow the user to pull the tabs to dispense the contents. The large encumbered design makes loading the single-dose medication difficult and cumbersome for the pharmacist as it takes a larger space to fill, fold, and seal.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,763,810 is a medication dispenser for multiple medications using a rotating belt. The belt is designed to rotate under the medication holding compartments and the belt has at least one opening such that the medications are dispensed when the belt openings rotate under the medication. However, multiple rotating belts are required for each row of the tray and results in loss of coordinated control and dispensing of the medication while further requiring the rotating dispensing belt to be interwoven across multiple rows as depicted in the figures.
Thus, there is a need for easy dispensing of the medicine trays in a uniform and automated fashion which does not require the user to open the individual compartments.